Elder Tanner Smith - Ghana Accra Mission

I have been busy prepping Sister Ruth for baptism this Sunday. She is such a sweet person. Teacher her really reminds me of Ammon and King Lamoni. She is christian but her beliefs were very different then what we believe. When I first met her she was always angry and never wanted to talk to us and now she is always smiling and wanting to learn. Just like Ammon, the king didn't have a very warm welcome, but after serving for a time he opened up and trusted Ammon. I think the same thing happened with Ruth. It took about 3 months of visiting her and her neighbor, who is a member, talking to her every day for her to actually sit down and have a lesson with us. By the end she trusted anything we would teach to her because she knew that we were real servants of Jesus Christ.

We received a referral 2 Sunday's ago from a member in another ward, and his friend is what we call a Golden Investigator. Her name is Abigail and she is in her mid 20's. She is very successful for how young she is and is normally busy during the week so we can never see her except after church on Sundays. We had a great first lesson with her where she said she normally doesn't go to church, because she doesn't like how she feels when she goes to other churches. It wasn't until she came to our church and went to relief society class when the relief society president was giving announcements. She was so impressed that the church cares so much for the women that they have a separate class where they can learn specifically for them. Normally its the men who always teach and the men who ask all the questions here so she was really excited about relief society. We gave her a baptism date after our first lesson for the 13th of August. I was worried that she wouldn't be able to make the date because we wouldn't be able to teach her everything since we can only meet on Sundays. This last week she came and told us she has read all of the missionary pamphlets and knows all of the commandments that she is expected to keep and has agreed to keep all of them. I was shocked! No one reads the books we give them haha. She is really smart and we're super excited for her baptism Day.

Yesterday after church I got a call from President Heid and he told me that I will be transferred next Tuesday to Tema. I'm already in Tema zone, but I'm now going straight to the Area Tema. I will be replacing Elder Harris who is going to leave to become AP and my new companion is Elder Fall. I already told you about Elder Fall I believe. He is from Burkino Faso and is the only missionary in the world from that country. There is no branch, district, or stake in Burkino Faso, so when he goes home he will be a pilgrim for the church there. He joined the church while he was going to school in Togo. He was a Muslim before he joined the church and his parents were not happy at all about his conversion to Christianity. He'll be going home in 3 months so I'm really excited to learn more from him. I'm really sad I'll be leaving Batsonaa and I won't be able to finish Elder Siafa's training, but I'm striving to be a "Yes President" missionary. Some upsides is that my new apartment has A/C so That'll be nice:)

I'm doing fine and I'm grateful for all of your guy's prayers! I'll keep you all in my prayers and can't wait for when we'll be able to all see each other again!

This week came and left really quickly. I had to go to Accra early in the week to see the doctor so I could get some meds for my ear. I didn't want to have to go all the way to Accra, but our mission nurse told me I didn't have a choice. The doctor said my external ear and ear drum were really swollen and inflamed so he prescribed me some ear drops which helped out a lot. We are still teaching Ruth who will be baptized this Sunday. We had an awesome lesson where we taught Chastity and I really felt the spirit teaching. We focused on her concerns with it and I really saw the Holy Ghost testifying to her that what we were teaching was true. Sometimes missionaries will want to postpone teaching commandments like Chastity, Word of Wisdom, and Tithing, but my most spiritual lesson's on mission have been while teaching these things. We really help investigators understand what thing's their doing in their lives that they need to repent of and we get to watch them go through this repentance process which is a sweet experience.

I got a call from President Heid early in the week asking if I'd help with a project to go around with a Bishop of another ward and show him all the apartments in Accra to pick up trash and broken items, since I know where all the apartments are. I went Saturday morning and finished around Noon-1:00. We went to the mission home after and President took me out to lunch at a real nice place and got some frozen yogurt after. I felt like I was getting pampered way to much for how little work I did in the morning. I thanked him for taking me around and getting me food and bringing me back to my area. I'm not expecting pampering like that till I go home. 😉

This week I really appreciated talks from latter day prophets. I always had the perspective that Latter day apostles and prophets just explain scripture more for us to understand but as I've been listening to them speak on my speaker I've really been learning that what their teaching is new and is AWESOME. There are no other churches out there where their leaders will get up and speak and answer our every day questions. There is so much in our church to learn and apostles and prophets are the experts who just try and teach us simply. I'm trying to be like them so I can be an example to our investigators. I'm trying to learn as much as I can so that I can better teach investigators with simplicity. It makes me so happy when we are able to answer questions to people that have been wondering their whole lives. Our church has the answers and more importantly our church IS the answer.

Thanks for all the love and support! I feel you're prayers every day! Hope you know I pray for you every morning and night so that your lives can be blessed while I'm working out here. ​Love,Elder TManSmith

Hey people hope everyone is doing great this week. I myself am doing great right now, but I got hit with an ear infection last week. I don't think I've had an ear infection this bad, but it was not fun and basically immobilized me on Thursday. I couldn't really think of anything to do for it either so I told our mission nurse and she told me I could come to Area office in Accra to get it checked by the area office doctor, but I didn't want to have to waste a whole day traveling just for my ear hurting so I took some Ibuprofen and went on for the day.

This week was really frustrating for teaching. The first couple weeks I was doing most of the teaching and just letting Elder Siafa testify and add any comments he had. This week I let him take the lead in most of the lessons and he did a whole lot better then I would have when I first came on mission, but we got in a couple of arguments in lessons over doctrine which resulted in bible bashing which is never really fun. Our first instinct is to prove people wrong of what they believe using scripture, but that's really ineffective. One instance was with a woman who was a seventh day adventist that we contacted. She absolutely loves her church and says she will never leave. I asked her what are the things she liked about her church and was able to teach her some doctrine of our church without it feeling like we were trying to pull her away from her church. It went really well and then at the end of the lesson Elder Siafa pulled out some scriptures that talked about how the sabbath day was moved to the ''Lords Day'' or Sunday after Christ was resurrected again and the whole feeling of the lesson changed from getting to know each other to both of us defending our faiths. Oh well! It's a good experience for him and he's learning same as me. Another frustration this week was teaching Ruth about the Book of Mormon. We tried to teach her why the people in the Book of Mormon weren't named in the Bible and spent about 20 minutes explaining it and at the end she said ''Ohhh okay I understand!'' and then 5 minutes later after reading 1 Nephi 1 she asked us ''Why aren't these people named in the Bible?'' She's really sweet, but it's so frustrating teaching people something knew because they hold onto what they grew up knowing. I think a lot of the less educated people in Ghana believe that the Bible is the complete worlds history and if they here something that wasn't written in it, then it didn't happen.

During the week I felt like my ability to testify about the Book of Mormon has decreased. So I prayed a lot about it and studied a lot from the Book of Mormon. During church I was reading 2 Nephi 25: 20-30. Which talks about the purpose of the Law of Moses and how it was just the temporary law until Christ comes. My favorite verse is 25 which says ''And we talk of Christ, we rejoice in Christ, we preach of Christ, we prophesy of Christ, and we write according to our prophecies, that our children may know to what source they may look for a remission of their sins.'' It made me really think that everything they did back then was to point people to Jesus Christ whether it was burnt offerings or anything else. Everything points to Jesus Christ. Everything they were commanded to do by the law was to point them to the coming of a Christ. I was thinking it's kind of the same way right now. When we are asked to do something by our leaders it's to point us to Jesus Christ. It is to lead us unto repentance so we can have a remission of our sins THROUGH HIM. Our callings in Elder's quorum, relief society, primary, home teaching, visiting teaching. All of these are to help the growth of the church, but if we look deeper it's all to point us to Christ, because as we more fully magnify our callings we talk of Christ, rejoice in Christ, preach of Christ, and prophesy of Christ. I'm so grateful that our church has a correct understanding of Jesus Christ so that we can more closely follow him and his example. As I'm serving a mission it's not only to serve the people of Ghana, but it is to lead me to Christ and to gain more knowledge of him.

This passage in the Book of Mormon really helped me with helping me be able to testify of it stronger and I know as I continue to read and learn new things that I'll continue to testify stronger. Hopefully all of you are reading the Book of Mormon every day so that you can do the same!

Hey Family, miss you like crazy this 4th of July and can't believe that last year around this time I was saying all of my goodbyes for 2 years. The 1st year I've been in Ghana has truly changed me. I have such a bigger perspective on life seeing how things are in Ghana. The crazy part of all is that I've grown so accustomed to how life here is that I've forgotten how things are like back home! Sometimes I don't think we realize how blessed we really are in living in the US and now more then ever I am grateful to be an American. This week we went to a members house and helped her to fetch water from a well a couple minutes away. They fill the buckets and then put them on their heads and carry them back to their home till their main water jugs are full. I was able to help out the member fetch the water. I was thinking how crazy is it that I'm actually USED to the fact that people have no running water here. I can't tell you the number of times I've helped members fetch water, but I'm just grateful I was born into this family and I was able to have opportunities that others in the world only hear about. I can't wait to get home in 1 year time and see all of you and the new kids as well. I promise that I'll be the fun uncle for all of them!

This week was a miracle in itself. The past 3-4 weeks we've only had around 7 member present lessons and the area hasn't been progressing the way I've hoped it would be. Especially with the new companion I was hoping that the area would be doing better then it has. This week we had a good plan on how we could improve just our member present lesson's and everything kind of fell into place. We received 5 referrals from members and investigators who all seem to be serious about investigating the church, and then we had 7 people come to church! I was amazed and so grateful. On top of that we were able to get 4 baptism dates for a couple of our investigators. Even after church yesterday a recent convert came to us and told us that her son wanted to be baptized so we'll teach and baptize him as well. It's been a complete turnaround! I was smiling all during church just because I was amazed that all the people who said they would come to church, ACTUALLY CAME.

I'll just quickly talk about an investigator we have named Ruth. She is a mother of 2 and her husband is a pastor. She lives next to a recent convert and when I first came she was always so angry and didn't ever pay attention to us or didn't want to talk to us. Recently something just changed in her where she was super happy when we went to visit the area and she would laugh and smile so we asked if it'd be okay if we could sit down and learn with her. The first two lesson's were mostly clearing up false rumors that she's heard about the church and then we taught her the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I was telling the story of Joseph Smith and her eyes were just glued to me. When I finished she just sat there and smiled. I could tell the Holy Ghost was with her and she could feel that joy it brings. My companion asked if she would be baptized and she just nodded her head and said yes. It was a awesome moment. She's been having problems with her husband and it really pushed her away from church since he's a pastor and now that she's come to our church she's really been so much happier. It's great to see the joy the gospel brings!

This week has been full of mixed emotions. I was very sad to say goodbye to Elder Eli on Tuesday at transfers, but what excited to get a Trainee. Elder Eli was transferred to a place Called Mamfe, and It's up in the Mountains. It's probably the prettiest place I've seen in Ghana so far so I'm jealous that he got to move up there. He white washed the area (white wash is where the companionship are both new to the area). He called me this week and told me that he already has 3 baptism dates! Its crazy the difference an hour and a half drive can make between two area's. I'm happy for him and sure he'll enjoy the rest of his time up in Mamfe.

My new companions is Elder Siafa and he is from Liberia. He is 24 years old and is a fairly new member to the church. He was baptized 2 years ago and was introduced to the church by his girlfriend. He has a small family with only 1 other younger sister and none of his family are members. He has been pretty quiet so far, but he has a strong testimony of the Book of Mormon and testifies really strongly to people that it's true. It really is exhausting training, but hopefully after training two people in a row President will assign me to be a junior companion. I've learned to really enjoy being the junior companion. When I go on exchanges with Elder Iyip and become the junior companion to him I'm able to listen and think a lot more about what the investigator is saying.

The teaching this week was interesting.. I got a call on Tuesday from a girl who said she read our pamphlet and wanted to learn more. I was Shocked!! I've passed out hundreds of pamphlets with our number on it and have never received a call from someone who said they read it and wanted to learn more. We went and taught her and it was a great lesson. That's when things started to get a little strange.. She called me after the lesson and said she wanted me to come back in the evening to teach her and I told her that we would come and then she requested that only I should come. I told her that it was impossible and she was okay with it. We went the next day to teach her and she was asking a lot of questions about dating and marriage which was strange, but I found it to be a good opportunity to teach law of chastity so that's what we did. She then called me that night and told me that she was deeply in love with me and was wondering if we could go on a date. I told her about missionaries and how we are here to serve only and we can't do that and that seemed to push her even more. She started to call me non stop and I decided it was best to start ignoring her calls. My district leader talked to her and told her I can't be in a relationship while on mission. It's been one of the funniest experiences I've had since I've been on mission and to make it even better, it was the first week for the new companion.

We also taught a older woman Named Dorothy and she read the whole plan of salvation pamphlet that we gave her. She had lots of questions on how she can go to the celestial kingdom. We taught her the Doctrine of Christ in 2 Nephi 31 and she said " Wow I better get baptized before it's to late!" We were excited and explained to her the things she can do to prepare to be baptized. We're hoping to baptize her next month. Other then that most of our lessons weren't really amazing. I had an old drunk woman yell at me while I was teaching another person and then she joined the lesson and started to burp and smelt like alcohol.

My small spiritual thought is about prayers. I've been thinking about prayer and the importance and also more effective ways to pray. I believe that when we pray for things we shouldn't just ask God for it, but we should ask God for the Opportunity to receive it. And example would be patience. If I pray for patience, I'm not expecting God to give me patience, but I'm expecting him to bring an opportunity to me where I can exercise patience. After all, our purpose in this life is to gain experience ourselves, not for God to give it to us straight. I heard a really good example of prayer that says that when we are facing a mountain in our life, we shouldn't ask God to remove that mountain from our way, but we should ask him for the strength for us to get over it. If God removes that mountain for us, we will face that mountain again in the future and we won't gain that experience we were sent down to receive.

As I teach investigators we always ask them to read and pray. Most of them don't have a problem in the praying part, but they refuse to read. They say God will let me know if what the Book of Mormon is true whether or not I read it. I know that isn't the way God works. I know that if we want something in life whether it be knowledge, Christlike attribute, or a good career, that we have to do everything we possibly can and throughout the way pray to God for him to consecrate our work. God will make up for what we can not do, but we have to make the steps to accomplish what we want.

First of all I want to give a shout out to all the Fathers of the Family to have a happy fathers Day!! Especially Brett since his new baby boy was born this week. I'm so happy for you guys and can't wait to see all the new nieces and nephews in the family!

It's ironic that transfers are right after Fathers day this year because in our mission we have a culture where we call our trainers our fathers. For example Elder Effiong was my Father since he was my first companion in the Field. Basically a father in the mission is someone who took part in your training for your first 3 months. I was able to finish Elder Eli's training so I am a "Step Father" It might sound a little silly, but it's just fun to mess around a little bit. Anyway I got a call Saturday from our zone leaders telling me that I will be "a new father" I thought they were joking but then they got serious and said that I'll be training this next transfer and Elder Eli is going on transfer to the Bush. I was very sad to hear that Elder Eli is leaving. It's always kind of sad to leave your old companion that you grow close to, but I'm excited to get a new "son". I'll go and pick him up at the mission home tomorrow so I don't know who he is yet or where he's from, but I know that there are 5 elders from the US and 1 from Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, and Liberia. Personally I'm really hoping for an African, but you know it's not really up to me!

This week also went well because we were able to baptized our investigator Zino. She is from Nigeria and we've been teaching her ever since I've come to Batsonaa. We always thought she just wasn't serious because she would never come to church, but in lessons she understood and believed everything we would teach her. We later realized that she just doesn't have enough money to make it to church and she was shy to share it with us. We talked with the relief society president to see if anyone could pick her up to bring her to church and we got it all set up. She's been coming to church consistently since then. I was honored with the opportunity to baptize her last Saturday. She really does have a strong testimony and we're hoping that she can just learn some good principles of budgeting so that she can find a way to save the money to come to church every week. I'll send pictures of the baptism.

Thats my short update for the week! Happy fathers day!!

Love,Elder Smith

Extra email to Dad.

Happy Fathers Day PAPA GRANDE!!!!! I'm going to have to stop calling you that because you're getting so thin. I'm currently weighing 100kg which I think is around 220 lbs but I'm not sure. How much are you currently weighing? Your email really touched me because I've been thinking a lot recently about how awesome both you and Mom are. I appreciate so much more the way you taught me when I was young. I've been learning a lot recently that as poor people join the church they won't always become more successful and live a poverty free life. They will complain because they don't understand how God is blessing their lives, but what they don't see is that they're now teaching their children correct principles on how to live their lives so that their posterity will have a chance to live a poverty free life. I've truly seen how the church will bless the family because it will bless children who are raised in the church. I'm so glad you raised me in this church because if I wasn't and if you didn't teach me those correct principles I would be in a very bad place. I was talking with Elder Harrigfeld the other day and we both talked about how glad we were that we grew up in the church, because if we didn't, high school would have been a complete disaster. I just wanted to write a separate email to let you know how much I value you as a father and how grateful I am that you were always around for me when I needed. You were always at my games and always spending quality time with me, whether it was watching tv, fishing, or playing golf. It's amazing how much different perspective you get in life when you see others living their lives so much different from yours. You really gain a much greater appreciation.

I LOVE YOU PAPA GRANDE!! (I know you hate all caps but I felt that it was fitting)

Hey Parents! Sorry no update last week. We had a zone conference on Monday which took our P-day away. We had Zone Training the next day on Tuesday in Tema. Tema isn't to far from Batsonaa but if you get on the road at the wrong time, it is the worst traffic you will ever experience. Normally we have to stop in Ashaiman to get a Tro Tro to get to our area from Tema. We couldn't get a Tro Tro from Tema to Ashaiman tro tro station though, so we took a taxi. We were stuck in traffic from Tema to Ashaiman for 2 HOURS. I was insisting that we should just walk because it's only a couple of kilometers, but we decided to stay in the taxi. After finally getting to Ashaiman Station it was 5 PM and didn't get back home till 8 PM. I honestly think I could have walked from Tema to our area in half the time it took to drive, it was by far the worst traffic I've ever been in. To make things better it was light off when we got back to our area. We were supposed to email after our zone training, but because it was so late and it was light off we weren't able to. We asked to get permission to come in to the Internet cafe early on Wednesday but our mission president told us not to. So that's the long story of why I couldn't email you last week.

To start with the sad news, my recent convert Jennifer died last week Thursday (2nd of June). She was the first person I baptized here in Batsonaa and it was heart breaking. She was 38 years old, married and had three children of the ages 4, 7, and 9. We baptized the Husband and wife together and then a few weeks ago baptized the oldest child as well as another child that stays with them. The really sad part about it is how she died... She traveled to her home village in the Bush and came back with ''Aba Medicine'' this is like tribal medicine and can be extremely dangerous. She was complaining that her chest was hurting and her family members in her home town got her the medicine. She came home on Tuesday and we were able to meet with her and her family so teach them and she was completely fine. Wednesday morning she started her medication and started to feel sick a little bit. She ignored her husbands advice to go to a hospital. We all went to our ward's mid week class and she seemed to be full of fatigue, but still looked okay. After the midweek class we went home and got a call about 1 hour later from her good friend who is also a member saying that she is vomiting and fell unconscious. We rushed to the house as fast as possible and they were already at the hospital. We took a taxi straight to the hospital and met her husband and her friend. She was in a coma and was throwing up all night. We gave her a priesthood blessing and went back home to rest. We finally got home around midnight. The next morning we went to the hospital and called all the ward leaders to let them know and they all rushed to the hospital. We had to go out to teach lessons, but received the news that she died around 6PM. Her husband was going to continue with the post mordum to find out what killed her, but her side of the family threatened that if he did that they would leave him to do all the funeral arrangements on his own. They obviously had a hand in it and didn't want to get into trouble for anything. The Husband doesn't have the money to do everything by himself so he went along and they didn't continue to do the post Mordum, but we are fairly sure that it was the medicine that killed her.

I got really upset at how this whole situation happened and angry at the hospital because they didn't really do anything to save her. I thought about how amazing America is because people die this way all the time here. I've been pretty home sick since then and have been studying a lot about liberty. In the Book of Mormon it says multiple times that the land is a land of liberty as long as they are keeping the commandments. Lehi gives his final testimony to his children that is they keep the commandments they will prosper in the land if they keep the commandments. I'm hoping that I can help the people here do that, but at every corner bad things happen. We found out that one of our more serious investigators has been drinking and last week he got drunk and went home and beat his girlfriend who he was staying with. It seems that she was wanting to get police involved and he begged us to get her to not get them involved. We tried to teach him that in the process of repentance we need to accept whatever consequences there are and he just got angry so left. It's frustrating to read all those missionaries letters about the awesome people they are teaching and stuff and right now Batsonaa is somewhat of a dead area. There are so many churches that persecute the church and whenever we get someone who could be serious they talk to a friend who will tell them false rumors about the church. We encourage them to pray to receive their answer, but they refuse.

The one bright side is that we do have a baptism set up for this week from a Nigerian woman. She is very serious about the church but lives very far away and can't make it to church unless a ward member picks her up. She doesn't have the money to take a taxi or Tro Tro to church either. We're planning on seeing her almost every day this week to see if she is really ready for the commitment of baptism and am hoping that she can follow through. I've set a personal Goal that I'll finish the book of mormon by the time I turn 1 year on mission. I'm in 2 Nephi chapter 28 now and I'll have to read about 18 pages a day to make it. I'm hoping that I'll be able to have the strength at night to keep reading if I don't finish the 18 pages in the morning. The problem with me and reading the Book of Mormon is I like to skip around. I've read every chapter in the Book of Mormon but I've only read through it from start to finish 1 time.

Anyway, How are things back home? Whats going on with Dad's job? How are the siblings? how are the rest of the family?

This week went by super fast! Tuesday it was raining so hard that hardly anyone was around. We tried to meet with some of our investigators but they all canceled for another day. We also tried contacting, but when it rains here in Ghana people don't want to be seen. I nearly ruined my shoes because of all the mud! We ended with the day with 0 lessons which was frustrating especially since the next day we weren't able to spend any time in our area. All of our Tema zone, which is about 28 missionaries went to Tema to do a massive contacting activity. One of the wards there has been struggling and requested all the missionaries in the zone to come and contact in the area. It was a holiday and most everyone was home, so it was a perfect time to contact. We must have knocked on every door/gate within a 2-3 mile radius and in the end received almost 50 phone numbers for return appointments. The missionaries in that area sure have a large work load now!

This activity really made me want to push and to contact/tract more. As we all know or have heard tracting is not the most fun activity, but it can be rewarding. We focused on contacting and finding new investigators this week and ended up 12 new investigators. We're hoping that we can get them motivated about the gospel and hope that we can focus enough time for all of them. Our ward is trusting us more and more everyday. We also received 4 referrals this week! After the 6 baptisms we've had of recent it'll be dry for some time but we're hoping that we can get some baptisms for June.

My personal study this week was focused on The character of Christ. I wrote an email in the beginning of my mission when I was in the MTC about this talk given by Elder Bednar. I decided to go back and do my own study on the Character of Christ and how he always turned outward to serve people instead of turning inward to be selfish and prideful. I started to read about his crucifixion in Matthew and Luke and came across the scripture of Luke 23:34 which says ''34 Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” I was amazed that at this point of his agony, he was still pleading with his father to forgive those who were defiling him and those who hated him. I've been trying to make it a focus whenever I teach a lesson in Church for us to be more like Christ by helping the members know more about the way he acted. I pushed them this week to forgive those who despise them, forgive those who mock them, and do them wrong. You see a lot of less actives here in Ghana because of contention between members and if they just got over the pride they have then the ward would be so much stronger then it is now.

Hey Everyone! This week was awesome since we had 4 baptisms! They are all children of recent converts, but it was some of the most frustrating teaching we've had to do. As we all know children ask a lot of questions and don't like to pay attention, so it was a miracle we were able to teach them everything before their baptismal interview. At least I know now that they know more about the commandments then I did when I was their age.

The baptism didn't go as smoothly as we were hoping to. It was supposed to start at 10:00 am, but didn't start until Noon. This was mostly because our first counselor who was supposed to be presiding in the meeting was super late. We called him many times and each time he said he's almost there. Eventually we called the Bishop to receive permission to start without him and have our ward mission leader preside over the baptism. After that everything went well! My first convert in Batsonaa was able to baptize his children which was an awesome experience, and Elder Eli baptized the other two children. See all of the pictures below.

Mom was asking for a story of a missionary, recent convert, or member who had to give up a lot to be a part of the church. As I was trying to think of converts or members, a missionary came to mind above the rest. His name is Elder Fall and he is from Burkina Faso. Burkina Faso is located directly above Ghana and is primarily a Islamic Country. Elder Fall grew up as a Muslim and was very dedicated in his religious practices. He moved to the country Benin (just to the West of Nigeria) to stay with his uncle while he went to University there. While he was attending University, Missionaries started to teach him and he decided that this is the true church and decided he wanted to be baptized. When he told his parents they were furious and told him that if he joined the church they would stop helping him pay for school and he wouldn't be welcome in their home anymore. He saw how important the church was for his salvation and decided to join despite his parents threats. One year after Joining the Church in Benin, he was endowed and submitted his missionary papers. He was called to serve in Ghana Accra and is now serving as a Zone Leader in Adenta Zone which is our biggest zone in the mission. He has one of the greatest testimonies I've ever heard and I know his name will be known throughout the church one day. His parents are now talking to him and accept him as being a Christian, but still aren't extremely happy about him leaving the Islamic religion. The hardest part about his story is that the Church is not in Burkino Faso yet so when he goes home there is no ward or branch to be apart of. If he chooses to attempt to go to church he'll have to travel to the very northern part of Ghana where there is a small branch. He is enthusiastic that soon they will call missionaries to serve there and open up a new branch and when that happens there isn't a doubt in my mind that he will do all that he can to progress the work there. No doubt he has fears that as he goes back he won't be able to visit the temple or go to church, but what is really important is that he know's the church is true and he is doing the Lord's work now to bring others unto his Gospel.

Mom in her letter mentioned the story of Alma and Amulek and part of Job. I've been studying a lot this week on the topic of why trials and affliction come to us and my favorite scripture that has come from it has been in D&C 121 it says: 7 My son, peace be unto thy soul; thine adversity and thine afflictions shall be but a small moment; 8 And then, if thou endure it well, God shall exalt thee on high; thou shalt triumph over all thy foes. 9 Thy friends do stand by thee, and they shall hail thee again with warm hearts and friendly hands. 10 Thou art not yet as Job; thy friends do not contend against thee, neither charge thee with transgression, as they did Job.

I love to read this section to struggling members because sometimes we forget that our trials are nothing if we look at the big picture. That God will exalt us on high if we keep the commandments and do not murmur. Elder Eyring gave an awesome talk a while ago about the Pavilion that Joseph Smith was talking about in verse 1 of that same section. I'd love if all of you could listen or read that talk if you are ever stressed out or feel like life is getting the better of you. The talk has brought me comfort in times of need.

Hey Family! I can't believe I've almost been out for 10 months already! I'm excited for the next 14 months and definitely excited to see all the additions of the nieces and nephews. This week went great and far above what we thought we could do. Last week we had the tendency of leaving the apartment early and getting home a little earlier and it was really unproductive. No one is really around during the daytime but it's odd because normally in most area's people are in bed asleep by the time it gets dark which is around 7pm. [Give how close they are to the equator, the daylight span never changes] We decided to leave the apartment a little later and just have our lunch after our companion study so we get out about 12 noon and then finished by 9pm instead of 7-8. Not sure how but it changed everything for this week. We were teaching about 5 lessons a day (about 30 total for the week) and were able to contact more serious investigators. We have been spending way to long in lessons so we are both working on making our lessons under an hour. We like to spend time so that they can understand everything very well but it comes with disadvantages. We finished the week with 5 investigators with baptism dates, 6 investigators at church, 5 member present at lessons, and 5 New investigators. These are the focus key indicators in our mission and if we are able to accomplish 5 for each category each week then we achieve our mission standards, which is like a mission goal. While I was serving in the office I only really saw 3-4 companionship's accomplish this each week and those who did were in extremely good area's. Batsonaa is a pretty tough area, but this week we were able to see some really good people to whom we were led. We were also really blessed to have our investigators show up to church because normally they make the promise, but the church is to far for them to walk and they don't want to pay for the transport to get to the church.

We were able to extend baptism dates to 5 people this week, even though 4 of them were minors, who are children to recent converts. Even though they're children their parents know the importance for them to make the decision for them self. We've asked the parents not to force their kids to come to church but to choose for themselves if they would like to. We treat them like adults when we teach them even though the oldest is 15 and the youngest is 10. They all seem to enjoy church and want to be baptized. One of the children was saying how he liked church even before his mom was baptized 6 months ago and he thought she had to be baptized first.

I'm really starting to connect with the ward and our bishop as well. Our bishop wants to make sure that we are getting fed by members and trusts us that we'll make an impression and be able to get some referrals out of them. So far so good! One of the referrals is one of our baptism candidates! I'll talk more about all the people we are teaching individually next week but I just wanted to let you know more of a broad view for this week.